A Recharging Industry Rises

Tens of thousands of new electric cars are zipping into traffic this year, and with them come a trunkful of strategies about how to recharge them.

There are at least four ways to go: recharging slowly through a standard 120-volt wall socket, the type a consumer would use for a hair dryer; buying a faster 240-volt home charger, about the size of a garden gnome, for several thousand dollars; plugging into the same 240-volt charger in a public parking space but paying a price; or using a $30,000 superspeedy public charger that takes only minutes but is not widely available.

The only consensus is that the more opportunities there are to recharge, the better the sales of vehicles that can generally go fewer than 100 miles between plug-ins.